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Thread: ONE LUCKY DUDE ... a true short story ...

  1. #1
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    Smile ONE LUCKY DUDE ... a true short story ...

    For some reason ... this kidding season had been a hard and difficult one. After talking to some of the biggest breeders in the United States recently ... I am told I am NOT the only one having hard and dangerous kiddings.

    My hubby swears it is all the chemtrails that have been dropped on us since everything else is the same,and I have never had such a hard year before. I was thinking GMO grains? Hay treated with too much chemical crap?

    Anyway ... on to my little sweetie. I wish I could post pictures but a computer whiz I am not so ...
    Last Thursday one of my first freshners started her kidding. Bad deal cause she was 6 days too early. And, yes I knew for sure cause I took this doe to the buck. And, only one time.
    Everything seemed normal but two were born dead but fully developed. One came breech, the other a normal presentation.
    Then out popped this little tiny buck. I grabbed him up and rushed him into the house.

    He nursed one time on the bottle, then seemed to have lost his sucking reflex. His neck was suddenly loose, and he was not able to hold his head up.
    Instead of trying to get him to nurse on a nipple I used a syringe and fed him once every two hours for two days. On the third day he was standing, nursing and trying to do the baby goat dance steps! LOL!

    Since he has no littermates to snuggle with I used hot water in pop bottles, towels, and a med. sized box to keep him in my kitchen. Once he was doing better I moved him into my guest bathtub. Yesterday I found him sleeping on the rugs in the bathroom after escaping his bed in the tub, twice in a row.
    After the 7 pm feeding last night he moved into the barn with one of his half sisters!! She is upset but he thinks she is GREAT! He loves to tag along with her no matter where she goes. She thinks he is a pest!

    I was emailing with one of the most important breeders of LaManchas in the states yesterday. She told me nearly all babies die when they are born as early as these three were. In all honesty she told me that this little guy SHOULD not have made it either.
    She told me ... He is ONE LUCKY DUDE! Thus ... that is now his name.

    Since no pics ... He is coal black with dark rust points and a very weird snow white blaze on his face that goes from right to left. At the end of the blaze is a little pink spot on the left nostril. He also has a tiny white splash on his left side right behind his left leg. AND, the really small gopher ears.

    Anyway ... just wanted to let everyone who is kidding this year to watch for abnormal stuff since it seems to be happening all over the United States this year.
    Also, I have a totally closed herd. I do not take them off the place and I do not allow strange animals on this ranch AT ALL!

  2. #2
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    All the goat books give advice on problem kiddings, and then go on to say that the reader will probably never need the information, as goats almost never have any problems. The lady who sold us our goats seems to be having a tough year too. Latest: she recently lost a doe to what she believes were conjoined twins. (She reached inside to assist, but did not open the doe after her death.)

    There are no good goat vets in the area. If I have problems with our two girls, I'm on my own.

  3. #3
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    aww Red, ya done good!

    we found that giving newborns who lack a strong sucking desire or ability seem to get alot of benefit from giving them a 400iu cap of Vit E. We poke a hole in the end and squirt it in their mouths.

    one weak doeling acted like we gave her a shot of adrenalin, it was something to see and she went on to grow out fine.

    sorry about the ones you lost, that is rough, but congrats on
    One Lucky Dude!

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    Cool Had two in one sack this year ...

    That was the weirdest I have ever had.
    Someone I know had a doe kid with four alive and one with two heads and six legs a few years back. She was soooooooooooooooooooo upset by that. I told her that would do it for me also!!

    I really have to wonder as time goes on ... how much does the nuke disaster in Japan have to do with all of this stuff?

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    Reminds me of that weird disease that's hitting the UK that's causing deformities in livestock babies.

    We had a very normal kidding season, albeit an early one! I had nine kids hit the ground in just a little over a week -- Jan. 28 through the first week in February! Son's doe had a buck and a doe, and of the 7 that were mine, one was a doe and the rest little boys. No difficult births, no deformities, everything pretty normal.

    LRRH, I am so glad the little boy survived. You done good!
    IF you are willing & obedient , you shall eat the good of the land: But if you refuse & rebel, You shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it. Isaiah 1:19, 20

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    This stuff DOES seem to run in streaks. We can go years without a breech birth (worse in cows than goats or sheep... the size problem- big heads, wide shoulders and hips- makes a live breech birth a rarity. We save around 85%, but it's hard on everyone) and then suddenly we'll get 5 or 6 in a row.

    We did have one year where we had several cows go WAY overdue- the worst went 6 weeks over, and had a stillborn 160# monster bull calf. A couple weeks later, we induced labor on one we knew (AI breeding) was 2 weeks overdue, although the vet swore I'd be "aborting a 6 month fetus" if I induced her. As it turned out, we were both right- she had an 18", 22# genetic dwarf... cutest thing I've ever seen. I've got pictures of my 2 year old leading him around on a leash... he came up to the kid's waist.

    At that time, Cornell was suggesting that we had problems with moldy clover hay. There are LOTS of plant estrogens in soy, in clover, and probably in some other natural plants.

    I can honestly say I've NEVER seen a chemtrail around here. In fact, for years, I didn't believe in them (although a few 'net friends who I trust implicitly, as being clear headed and having a scientific mindset swore they had them... so I did wonder). But one day when we headed across the state to go to one of our kid's college graduations, I saw what couldn't be explained in any other way. So I now do believe they exist... but not here. For whatever reason...

    A neighboring dairy farm had a live two headed heifer calf born a couple years ago. The truth is, a certain percentage of pregnancies are going to produce problems. We had a calf three years ago who was born with the intestines on the outside, and missing one hind leg. I sent pictures to a vet pathologist friend, and he explained how the cell division at a certain stage of pregnancy can cause that type deformity. Rare, but not "unnatural".

    One thing... cows get Lyme disease, and I suspect every other mammal does as well. And Lyme causes horrific birth defects. I found that when our cows were exposed to a certain pasture (where they had to walk up a long lane with brush along the sides; hence perfect tick conditions) when they were between 40 and 70 days pregnant, they had deformed (and often stillborn) calves. We finally solved that disaster (we were getting 12 or more deformed calves a year, and NO vet was any use at all. Cornell told me that "cows don't get Lyme. We know that because we don't even test for it"!!!- that's your classic Ph.D reasoning!!! LOL!) by treating every cow when she was dry with three weeks of high dose tetracycline. We went several years without any deformities. When we had one again, we went back to treating them all. The one thing is that they SEEM to develop immunity after having Lyme and being treated... something humans don't do to my knowledge.

    But if you're having any real problems, and if you're in an area with tickborne diseases, you might want to look for other signs of problems- swollen lymph glands, heart problems, arthritis in weird joints (cows don't get arthritis in their front legs... cows with Lyme do)

    Good job saving the preemie! I suspect one or more of the other triplets died in utero, which triggered labor in the dam. It's unfortunate that you usually lose any other babies which are in there at the same time, no matter what. You did good...

    Summerthyme

    Summerthyme

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    Quote Originally Posted by grower View Post
    Reminds me of that weird disease that's hitting the UK that's causing deformities in livestock babies.

    i wondered about this too. they were having still borns as well as the deformities


    good job LRRH! happy little guy will probably be a special one in the bunch
    float like a butterfly...

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    I wierdest deformed kid I have ever had was last year with a buck kid born with a brain attached to his ball sack about the size of my fist...the sack was about 6 inches long with a major blood vessel in it and the brain was pulsating...I did surgery, removed the brain and a inch of the ball sack, I stitched him up, and later his balls dropped and I was able to rubber him..he acted normal otherwise and I sold him for meat at 4 months of age...

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    Here I am on kid watch and started reading this thread! I feel the need to go lay hands on my girls and pray for healthy babies. I wasn't even sure until the past week that they were even pregnant but it is becoming obvious now. Sure hope all goes well as I don't have any experience with challenging birthing conditions.


    Glad to hear little Lucky Dude is doing so well!

    Sherry in GA

  10. #10
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    Limner... actually, if she was truly bred too young, it may just have been nature's way of keeping her from dying trying to give birth.

    We had a crippled Dexter heifer (her mother had hidden her in the hay ring to keep her warm when she was about 4 days hold- hubby dropped a thousand pound bale of hay on her. It totally trashed one shoulder, which never healed completely). When she hit a year old, we hadn't seen her showing heat yet, which was VERY unusual for a Dexter. (they mature WAY too early... heifers are in heat and breedable at 5 months, and I've seen a 5 month bull calf breed a cow- getting her downhill from him!!- and then go back and nurse on his mother!! It's INSANE)

    Anyway, she also looked a little thinner than we liked, and we thought maybe she wasn't getting around and grazing as well as she needed to, although the leg didn't really seem to bother her that way. We brought her in the barn and I looked at her closer. And then realized SH*T! She's pregnant! She was SEVEN MONTHS pregnant at 12 months old.

    And yes, a week later, she dropped the calf herself... saving us the trouble of aborting her, which we'd reluctantly agreed was likely the only way to save her. She did go on to have a healthy calf for another owner last we heard.

    And Sherry... don't sweat it. The VAST majority of births go fine. We do tend to have more problems with our dairy cows, because we breed for large, wide framed animals which naturally don't pass through the birth canal as easily as a tiny little thing would. We do have access to "calving ease" information on many of the bulls we use AI, and we use "high calving ease" bulls on first calf heifers and any animal which has had a difficult time in the past. But, feeding too much energy in late gestation can put fat on the fetus AND the mother, and that's not a good combination... you can get an extra large baby and the fat on the mother isn't just where you can see it- it also builds up all over the inside, including in the vaginal canal.

    It's best to know that there CAN be trouble, so you don't wait way too long to get help, but 95% of the time, there won't be any trouble. If possible, of course, try to have someone experienced who will come over and help if necessary. I once walked a pair of total newbies through a calving on the phone from my hospital bed... they were "cow sitting" for someone, had NO idea what to do, and it was Sunday morning- everyone they knew they might be able to call was at church. Except for me... I was in the hospital, fighting the MRSA infection in my foot. By the time I was done, I had four or five fascinated nurses hanging around in the room listening to the call! It was hilarious.

    Summerthyme

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